Charging and payment proving

How does Charging and payment proving work, step by step?

1. 1

   Step 1: Confirm the tariff and the commercial configuration

   The prices, the units they are charged in, any minimum or session fees, any idle or overstay arrangement and the way all of it is displayed are confirmed with the client and loaded into the system before testing. What is shown on the screen and in any application must match what is actually taken, and the two are checked against each other rather than assumed to agree. Getting the commercial configuration settled before testing avoids retesting the whole sequence afterwards.

2. 2

   Step 2: Prove a full session with a real vehicle

   A vehicle is connected and a complete session is run from start to finish: authorisation, start of charge, energy delivered, session end, and the record produced. It is done on every bay rather than on a sample, because a bay that was never tested is a bay that will fail in front of a customer. Energy delivered as recorded is compared with the metering, and the session record is checked for the right bay, the right time and the right amount.

3. 3

   Step 3: Test with more than one vehicle type

   Different vehicles communicate differently with the same equipment, so proving is carried out with a range of vehicles rather than with the one the commissioning engineer happens to drive. On a commercial vehicle or fleet site the actual fleet vehicles are used, because those are the only ones that matter. Any vehicle that behaves unexpectedly is recorded and referred to the equipment supplier rather than dismissed.

4. 4

   Step 4: Prove every payment route

   Each way a driver can pay is tested end to end: contactless payment at the unit, any application-based route, account and fleet arrangements, and any local or promotional access the site offers. Each route has its own path through the system and its own points of failure. An untested route is an untested route, and the first driver to use it is doing the testing on the operator's behalf.

5. 5

   Step 5: Test the failure cases

   Declined authorisations, sessions interrupted part way, a driver who unplugs early, a vehicle that stops accepting charge, a loss of connectivity mid-session and a request for a refund are all exercised deliberately. These are the cases that generate complaints and lost money in the first weeks of operation, and they are far cheaper to find now. Each case is checked for what the driver sees as well as for what the system records.

6. 6

   Step 6: Reconcile the money

   Test transactions are followed all the way through to settlement, and the amounts reaching the account are reconciled against the sessions recorded and against the tariff. Any test refunds are checked through the same route. Reconciliation is what proves the commercial arrangement, and it is the step most often skipped because it takes days rather than minutes to complete.

7. 7

   Step 7: Check the driver experience at the bay

   Screen legibility in bright sun and after dark, the readability and correctness of the displayed price, the reach and handling of the cable, the clarity of the instructions, the accessibility of the payment interface and the adequacy of lighting and signage are all assessed on site with somebody standing at the bay. Problems found here are cheap to fix now and expensive to fix once the site is open and being reviewed publicly.

8. 8

   Step 8: Train the site operator's people and record the results

   Whoever is on site when a driver has a problem is shown how the equipment works, how to start and stop a session, what the common failures look like and who to call. The results of the whole proving exercise - every bay, every payment route, every failure case, the reconciliation - are recorded and issued with the handover documentation, along with anything left outstanding and the date by which it is to be resolved.